


One Last Chance

by GLITCHEDDEAD



Category: A Way Out (Video Game)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It, M/M, Vincent loves Leo and Leo loves Vincent but also wants to fuckin punch his tash off., Vincent really kicks himself for this one, im so late to this fandom but i really need this, implied sexual relations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 04:14:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26346937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GLITCHEDDEAD/pseuds/GLITCHEDDEAD
Summary: Leo didn’t think heartache was possible. The way it's portrayed in movies, the hysterics that follow always look so overdramatic. Leo never believed someone could feel heartache. It was fantastical, something made for young women to relate to when their wreck of a man turns their back on them. Something they can nod their heads too and mutter under soft tears that they too have felt that. Leo never believed in it. Not until now.Fix it Fic - hurt / comfort
Relationships: Leo Caruso/Vincent Moretti
Comments: 3
Kudos: 31





	One Last Chance

**Author's Note:**

> HI IM SO LATE TO AWO!  
> I Played this game 2 days ago. Me and a friend both ended up on the floor sobbing. I needed to fix the end or I was going to feel emotional distress for the next year.

Leo didn’t think heartache was possible. The way it's portrayed in movies, the hysterics that follow always look so overdramatic. Leo never believed someone could _feel_ heartache. It was fantastical, something made for young women to relate to when their wreck of a man turns their back on them. Something they can nod their heads too and mutter under soft tears that they too have felt that. Leo never believed in it. Not until now.

Hands grabbing onto bloodied fabric covering his chest. The pain that tore and twisted under layers of bruised skin and broken ribs. His heart _hurt._ Maybe it was delusion? The bullets that had pierced into his side and shoulder bleeding him dry. That must be it.

It must be because Leo didn’t want to make sense of this. He didn’t want to rationalise the man he had spent months with, had given him his everything, his life, his trust, his fantastical heartbreak.

Despite the loud thumping in his ears, he could hear Vincent’s heavy exhales. His soft stuttered pleas as he staggered toward Leo. His hands shaking from the adrenaline and possibly from the pain. Leo doubted he felt as much as he did right now. He doubted Vincent felt the betrayal split him completely in two as it did for Leo.

If Leo could he’d back up further, scraping soles against the hard pavement till his back hit a wall. Being close to Vincent was the last thing he wanted. The thought of Vincent reaching out...

“Get the fuck away from me!” he barks but it comes out strained, broken. Almost pathetic. He knows he must look it to Vincent. Wounded, bloodied and unable to stop the tears from streaming out the corners of his eyes. He doesn’t remember when he started crying. It feels hot and wet against his cheeks, a foreign feeling. He’s never been one for crying. Never been the one for being intimate with his feelings. He's estranged from it.

“Leo, I-I’m...”

“You're what?! Sorry?” Leo interjects, his voice hoarse from yelling. It makes Vince stop in his tracks. “You hurt me, asshole! I trusted you and you betrayed me! You lied to me,” he takes a shaky inhale. “I trusted you.” God, he sounds pathetic. How his voice trembles and wavers with ache.

Vincent looks exhausted. There was a moment before this-before the gunfire and helicopter chase- that Vincent almost looked sincerely sorry. The way his brows lifted away from his wide eyes lips slightly pulled apart as if he were about to spill his apologies out before him. But that anger...that rage that consumed Leo was burning hot against the sickly sweat of his back, it made him look past the facade Vincent wore so well.

“Don't make me fight you.” Vincent pleads. He's still but his hands continue to tremble by his sides. “I won’t do it, Leo.”

It earns him a laugh. Coughed out and bitter.

“You’re the one that gunned me down from a helicopter you stupid bastard.”

Leo knows he’s not dying. Not after he knocked Vince hard on his ass. Sending his automatic flying off the rooftop. Vince isn’t going to lay hands on Leo. Not like he had done before-before the calamity-before Mexico.

“So, what now? You'll drag me back to that-that fucking cell? Reduce my sentence by a couple of months? No...no I’m not fucking doing it. You used me. I’m not fuckin’ going back.”

“Shut up for a second, Leo.” Vincent gestured for him to shut up. Leo doesn’t take the hint. Following the gesture up with some choice words and snarls.

“NO. I WON'T FUCKIN' DO IT. I HAD EVERY RIGHT TO DO WHAT I HAD TO-"

“Caruso! Shut up for a god damned second!”

There’s a prolonged silence between them. The sirens from cruisers get louder as they approach the building. An occasional glimpse of red and blue just manages to sweep across the rooftop.

Leo tries not to stare at Vincent. He really does. But he can’t think rationally, his head and body hurts and every ache is telling him to knock Vincent out-wipe that stupid look on his face. The one Leo has seen a few times before. Where he's thought too hard about so little. Overcomplicating an equation and hoping it is going to give him the answer. His brows curl down almost shading over his eyes. Hard lines form canyons across his forehead. The kind of hard look that might give Vince a migraine. Vince never takes his eyes off Leo either. And Leo isn’t sure who is going to break first.

“Well if you’re gunna fuckin' shoot me pig, you best do it now!” There’s no dignity in putting down an injured dog. Especially since this one never deserved to be shot in the first place.

Vincent shakes his head before picking up a sluggish hobble toward the younger man. “Get up.” It’s not a suggestion. It's sharp and immediate. It's an order. Something Leo has only heard a few times intimately.

Leo tries at first. His legs have started to go numb. Trousers stiff and cold from the water. It’s not until Vincent grabs his forearms to help him to his feet that Leo feels the urge to really want to fucking kill him. He hates the warmth of his roughed hands gripping tightly onto his skin. How dare he touch him-help him after everything. He doesn’t need his pity but _God. He wants it._

“Get the fuck off’a me! I told you I ain’t going-"

“You’re not.”

“What?”

Leo stops. It's staggered and he almost falls in trying to force the larger man to a halt.

“I’m giving you another way out.” Vincent turns to look at Leo.

God, he hates himself for being so incredibly in love with him. He hates himself for opening up to Vincent. So vulnerable and intimate. He hates that he wants to fall into his chest despite wanting to tear him open. Dig into his flesh with blunt nails to see if this man really does care. To see if his heart thumps accordingly.

It feels like they stop to look at one another for far too long. Vincent could see the ever-burning fire in Leo’s eyes. He had hoped Leo could see the guilt in his.

Vincent breaks away when he hears Emily just a couple of floors above inside. “You've got to go Leo...now!” he pushes the younger man’s weight away from the roof entrance. “Get down the service ladder. Take a car and get out.”

Leo laughs after a croaked groan. His hand instinctively clutching onto his wounded shoulder.

“You know... it was once me and you against the world Vince. But now I see it was always you against me.” It's not very poetic coming from Leo. Vincent knows it doesn’t have to be because he understands what Leo meant. Vincent was probably the only person Leo had trusted that wasn’t Linda. He destroyed it. Crushed it in front of Leo only to ask why the hell he looked so upset? Vincent deserved whatever came to him, but he didn’t deserve to see Leo die. To see him back in jail. He couldn’t.

“Leo...I love-"

“VINCENT? ARE YOU OK?” Emily was hanging out the top floor window. Her torso barely fitting through the gap.

“Yeah, I’m fine!” He calls up, his hands waving back and forth once.

“Hold on I’m coming down!”

As soon as she pulls herself back inside Vincent turns around wanting to finish the sentence he started. But Leo was already gone.

* * *

Vincent had lied to his partner, his boss and his wife. He was held up in medical for a couple of hours before he was sat for briefing. He told them everything, the truth. Something he had lacked practice in. He told them how they escaped, how they hid and what Leo did to track down Harvey. He told them how they got to Mexico. After that, Vincent did what he got good at. Lying. He never told anyone about the most intimate of moments. Those were his memories. Those were his feelings to bury.

He told his boss that he chased Leo into the building with Emily. Leo disarmed her and forced her out. They open fired until Leo forced them both through the top floor window. Landing a couple of floors down onto the maintenance roof. Leo lost his gun and Vincent took the shot before he could pull out a supposed pistol from the back of his pants.

He fell.

Vincent shot him in the chest, and he fell back off the roof and into the marina.

The chief of police ate it up. He believed every word but insisted that Moretti take a 3-week vacation. Suggested he gets some, one to one counselling too.

Carol was hard to convince. She stayed quiet at first. Refused to let him sleep in the house. Said he could see his daughter 4 days a week during the evening. When he eventually handed her the letter Leo told him to write she asked, “he's not dead, is he? He never fell into the river.”

Vincent knew she was too good for him. Knew him better than he did. He didn’t respond and she nodded, almost understandingly.

It had been 5 months since he had last seen Leo up on the roof. Bloodied and broken. The police searched the river for the body but eventually gave up when they couldn’t find it. Convinced it had been swept up further downstream. Vincent knew they stopped because they didn’t want to waste more resources on a criminal.

Linda was heartbroken. He assumed Leo had gone to Linda a few weeks after his death but her reaction...was raw, genuine. They even had a funeral. Alex didn’t cry. He held his mothers’ hand bravely and told her he was going to look after them both. Of course, Linda didn’t want Vincent there, didn’t want his respects or apologies. She cursed and yelled. She didn’t want the _Lying, cop bastard_ at her husbands’ funeral.

Vincent contemplated telling her. Contemplated confessing every little detail but he couldn’t. The guilt was his burden. His way of punishing himself until it ate away at him at night and found its way to the bottom of a bottle. Not only that but something told him that Leo didn’t want them to know.

Linda had moved out of the trailer not long after. When the guilt got too bad to handle, he drove up to confess but she was gone. Alex was gone. No moving address, no telephone number.

Vincent had hoped maybe Leo had decided to come back for them, take them to some hot coastal country with pure sandy beaches and constant cocktail refills but a month or so later he had bumped into Linda working as a hostess. She looked him in the eyes, and she found that Vincent couldn’t.

Vincent never retired. Not until James finally asked for his badge. Told him to give up the drink. To go home to take care of his wife and baby like a real husband. Sure, Carol had wanted that initially- For Vince to give up the job and find something less stressful-less dangerous. The problem was Vincent couldn’t see himself working in a dead-end 9-5 packing someone’s groceries. He couldn’t sit around all day watching his daughter grow by the second. Watching as Carol looked at him with the same broken stare Leo gave him.

Vincent doesn’t know what initially drives him to Arkansas. He stays in a motel for a while and tries to pick up odd jobs now and again but everything about waking up feels empty. Living feels empty. He empties his heart out one night to the barman in a local downtown place. It's run down and only a couple patrons stay till past midnight. Vince comes in at least one day a week if he can afford it and pours his heart out to the guy giving him scotch refills.

It was a slow process at first. The barman engaging in small talk after the 5th visit. Vince kept the details to a minimum, but something happened after he lost count of the scheduled scotch and therapy sessions.

“We bonded, you know? After grieving the loss of my brother, I held onto that anger for so long that by the time Leo entered my life he just…swept in. Replaced that anger with something else.”

“He was like a brother you didn’t ask for but needed right?” The barman says as he presses his elbows into the orange stained wood.

“Uh yeah. I guess.” _So much more than that,_ Vincent wanted to reply. “If I could make up for everything. If I just got the chance to tell him how sorry I truly am…”

“I’ve heard plenty of sob stories in here. The grovelling kind. The ones that scream ‘feel sorry for me’. But you're different. Genuine. Listen, if you want my advice; Stop wasting your money here. Get back out into the world. What you did can’t ever be changed but you can start to amend it. Find this Leo. Show him how damned sorry you are.”

Vincent nodded. His head seeming to perk up. “Yeah. I wish I could.”

Moretti isn’t as blackout drunk as he wished he was. Normally he’d finish up a job and go straight for the bottle till his eyes forced themselves shut. But this time he was able to pull out his apartment keys and open the door with an accurate precision he wishes he didn’t have.

Closing the door behind him he sheds his leather jacket-faded and worn from the sun. The bathroom is small but there’s just enough room for a sink, toilet and shower. The shower barely fits Vincent inside and the pressure is shit. The quicker out of this place- the better.

Vincent is broken out of his gaze, staring into the mirror at someone he wishes he recognised. The knock on the door startles him again.

“Who is it?” He calls out but no one replies. Just another hard two rhythmic knocks to the door.

“Fuck fine.” He grunts before turning the tap off and cautiously wavering forward.

There’s no one out there when he looks through the eye hole. There’s a sharp pain that twists in his gut- hoping that maybe it was Leo. Some kind of sick fantasy that Leo just forgives him, finds his address and runs into his arms like some story princess.

No one is there.

The chain comes loose as he pulls the door opens

“Hello?” Moretti steps outside.

“Hey.” The voice says from the right. leant up against the brick wall. “Sorry don’t mean to bother you but I think you forgot something.”

Leo.

Vincent can’t form words, not just yet. His brain lets him boil over and burn out. Lets him stand there stupidly mouth agape as he stares at Leo Caruso. Still taller than him, still bearing those ridiculous sideburns. Still staring at Vincent with eyes full of flames.

“W-What did I forget?” He chokes out. Gravelled and rough.

“Me, you fuckin’ dumbass.”

**Author's Note:**

> Give my Socials a follow!  
> Twitter: Glitcheddead  
> Tumblr: Glitcheddead


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